


Walking backward into the Void

by Kangoo



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: But no more than playing the game with it in mind honestly, Gen, Implied Corvo/Outsider, Outsider worship, Snippets, Void Madness, questionable eating habits
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-17 13:01:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9325001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: Corvo Attano is definitely too old for this shit.Dishonored 2 snippets.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Corvo's terrible eating habits.
> 
> Reference to starvation, and eating things off the ground. pls don't do that.

The night is warm, and they’re enjoying each other’s company when Meagan says, something like wry amusement in her voice as she gestures at the pieces of dark bread and whale meat they threw together as a meal while planning their next move.

  
  


“Must be something quite different from what you eat back in Dunwall, huh, Attano?”

  
  


Corvo doesn’t outwardly laugh, but his snorts could hardly be anything else. He glances at Sokolov, who hides his own smile into his glass of whisky, and turns to the ship captain with a bemused look. 

  
  


“Hardly. I picked the  _ worst _ eating habits from Coldrigde.”

  
  


Even fifteen years after the facts, the thought of this damned place is a painful one. And to think Ramsey would have sent him back there - well, he prefers not to. Sighing, he leans back in his chair in a rather useless attempt to find a more comfortable position for his aging bones and lets his eyes drift away from Meagan, back to the rolling waves and the city lights reflecting on them.

  
  


“I remember, you used to snack on anything you found in the Hound Pit,” Sokolov muses quietly, lost in his own memories. “Threw yourself on it like a dying man, too. And you always brought food from your trips, of all things.”

  
  


“Six month of little to no food will do that to you. And it’s not like the _ Loyalists  _ fed me.” In truth, they didn’t care much about who could eat and who couldn’t - he remembers Cecelia going to sleep hungry after Pendleton had finished what little they had left in one of his absurdly large meals. Most of what he brought back ended up divided between them: it’s one of the few things he did back then that he does not regret in the slightest.

  
  


“Outsider knows how you never got food poisoning, eating what you found lying around like that.”

  
  


He shrugs noncommittally, like it baffles him just as much. The Outsider is the exact reason he hadn’t, actually, but Corvo was not stupid enough to mention that to Anton Sokolov of all men. Having the god looking after his health had been as confusing as it had been welcome, at the time, and it had lasted longer than his partnership with the so-called Loyalists. Months after Emily coronation, he still fell out of half-formed nightmares right into the Void, and food spoiled beyond salvaging still tends to disappear in the span of time it takes him to blink, a decade after the whole debacle.

  
  


“ _ Damn _ , you’re worse than Rinaldo. I didn’t think it was possible,” Meagan whistles, genuinely impressed. She leans forward with a smile that makes her appear years younger, and asks, “Ever ate rat skewer?”

  
  


“The taste not too bad, once you get used to it,” Deciding she’s not properly disgusted, he looks her dead in the eyes and adds, “It’s worse raw.”

  
  


Her horrified stare is absolutely worth remembering how awful  _ that _ was. He’d been desperate at the time, running ragged, sleeping so little he was almost too exhausted to be angry, but he wouldn’t wish raw plague rat to his worse enemy. Not to mention one or two had still been  _ alive _ .

  
  


“How are you still alive?”

  
  
Again, he shrugs. “Honestly I have  _ no _ idea _. _ ”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corvo dies. It's not a big deal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon-typical violence and multiple major character death, I guess? But nothing sticks.
> 
> I die a lot, but apparently the power of the quicksave is a good alternative to 'sticking your soul into a statue of yourself', as far as immortaly goes. 
> 
> Technically not Dishonored 2? Eh, whatever.

The first time it happens, not long after being marked as the Outsider, he thinks it’s just luck.

  
  


He blinks and misses his mark. It happens often, he’s not yet used to the power bestowed to him by the Void, and usually it just results in bruises and frustration. But this time he’s jumping between buildings, far above the guards’ heads, and when his hands -knuckles bruised, fingertips scratched and bloody- barely miss the rooftop, he knows the fall will be far longer. He doesn’t even have the time to regret this one stupid mistake before he hits the ground back first in an horrendous cracking of bones and he-

  
  


Wakes up. The night shivers blue and gold, too quick for him to be sure it was real, and he’s only a few feet below his original target, sprawled on the cold stone of the building. He must have imagined his bone breaking, surely. He gets up and keeps on moving.

  
  


But then, it happens again.

  
  


He falls and reappears where he had begun, safe and sound. A bullet catches him in the chest, piercing his clothes like paper, and he is back in the dark corner he had stumbled out of by accident with nothing but the phantom burn of the wound to remind him he has barely a few seconds to move before a guard sees him. He bleeds out and he doesn’t, he’s eaten alive by rats and when they swarm out of the gutters he is waiting for them. 

  
  


He slips in the Void, falls from one of the drifting pieces of the real worlds frozen in place, and he is back before he can scream.

  
  


It doesn’t take long to join the dots.

  
  


“You are more interesting alive than you would ever be dead,” The Outsider says and waves it off like it’s nothing, like he wouldn’t laughs if any of his marked burned to death, was impaled on an Overseer’s blade, ripped to shreds by starving hounds.

  
  
Corvo doesn’t question it, in case the god would change his mind. He holds his bone charms tighter, closer to his chest, tracks down runes like his life depends on it - it does - and keeps running. He won’t die as long as he’s  _ fascinating _ : he intends to give the Outsider the show his life.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this scene a lot. Like, a LOT.

Being dragged in the Void is no surprise to most marked by the Outsider, and even less so to Corvo, as the god seems to have taken a liking to him. It has almost become a nightly occurrence at this point.

  
  


Which doesn’t mean the Outsider has learned anything about common courtesy or, let’s say,  _ warning people _ . It’s just one of those many things Corvo doesn’t even bother mentioning anymore. The earth is round, rats can’t fly, and getting dragged into the Void sucks.

  
  


_ Literally _ dragged, sometimes.

  
  


So when his fingers brush the doorknob and he feels something not-quite-there hook into his chest, wrap around his feet, he is hit by the realization that he really has no idea how bad it can get, seconds before he is hit rather hard by the ground and dragged across it, vainly grasping at the dirty, dusty floor in desperation.

  
  


He falls through what was, just before, a very real floor and into the Void, and then keeps on falling for a bit longer, as if this whole ‘plunging to his certain death’ hadn’t gotten old by the second time he had missed a Blink. The only thing he can see in the bottomless abyss of the place-that-is-nowhere are pieces of ground, like the jagged rocks at the bottom of a cliff, drifting as aimlessly as he feels into the emptiness. 

  
  


In the brief moment it takes to realize he’ll not manage to catch it in time, he makes peace with the fact that he will probably still be falling decades from now, for no other reason that the abysmal aim of the master of the place. It’s not a difficult peace to make. He just feels annoyed by it.

  
  


Just as he passes next to the floating island and then below, he feels something - very much  _ there _ this time - catching his arm. Despite his momentum, no matter how senseless that is here, it stops his free-fall dead in its track without much pain from the limb in question, and he’s left dangling from a grasp that feels oddly gentle, considering it must belongs to someone - some _ thing _ \- with a strength far greater than anything remotely human.

  
  


The Outsider hoists him up like he weighs nothing and lets him fall on the ground with a cocky smile that feels more at home on his features than any thoughtful expression he has seen before, which says a lot about what hides under that godly attitude.

  
  


It feels like Corvo should say something full of feeling, like ‘what the fuck’ or ‘can’t you just write, like everyone else’, but he just follows him on his memory trip without a comment. There is a lot to be done, and he doesn’t give enough of a fuck to bother arguing senselessly against a god,  _ this  _ god in particular.

  
  
(It’s almost better than the previous fifteen years of silence, anyway. Almost.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corvo is no stranger to hate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a character, I love Delilah, she's really interesting and her design is cool. But seriously I want to strangle her with my bare hands.
> 
> Your comments are lovely, you're amazing.

There is a surprising amount of living things in the Void, be they actually alive or taken from reality and suspended in time and space for the Outider’s Marked to stumble upon them. The most obvious is, of course, the whale roaming the sky-ocean-nothingness of the Void, its great, scarred body shimmering under unseen lights. Most aren’t half as moving as it is, though: more often than not, they’re barely  _ there _ , like a three-dimensional painting of trees and people left on lonely islands. The Outsider is not one to bother with life in his domain, not when there is so much of it outside.

  
  


When Corvo falls asleep and into the Void and sees roots coiled around the ship, softly thrumming with energy, he knows something is very wrong.

  
  


Delilah is an artist of the worst kind, obsessive and possessive, who paints to  _ keep _ rather than to show. It’s no wonder she’d try to take the Void and change it, twist it, try to make it alive and steady like plant life and everything it cannot be.

  
  


(Corvo hates her. He hates her more than any Lord Regent, more than any traitor or assassin, because there isn’t any regret in her heart, and her motive are barely more than thirst for power. He hates her because she took his daughter from him once again in front of his eyes, and because she walks in the Void like she owns it, like the ink-black emptiness is but another room of the royal palace and the dark eyed god is equal or below her. 

  
  


He hates her because she takes everything from him and then some, and comes to gloat about it in his sleep, replacing a familiar voice with her venom, and dares to make him question everything with a few words.)

  
  


Later, the Outsider will say, “Delilah is a part of me now, and I do not like it,” and he’ll be left awake again, thinking,  _ neither do I _ with more than weariness and guilt weighing heavy in his chest. There will be relief, knowing the Outsider is still there, being his usual cryptic, mildly-supportive self.

 

  
And there will be  _ hate _ .


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The runes sing, and Corvo follows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fact: I can't help but to collect runes and bone charms. I don't even use charms all that much, but it's stronger than me: I gotta track them down before doing the main quest.
> 
> On another note, fuck classes. I was also apparently bullied having a social life, which I strongly disagree with. Please give me back my free time.

Void madness is an insidious thing. It rides with runes and bone charms, in the flakes of darkness that seem to fall from them, and with the slow tide at night, when waves roll quietly on the shore and sing of infinite darkness far beyond these coasts. Sailors aren’t as prone to it as most : they are so close to the water, to the infinite realm of the Leviathan, barely a few breaths from it, they never feel the need to get closer, not with the sea already calling to them as soon as they step on solid ground.

  
  


Still, Samuel was wary of runes, because  _ fewer _ is a far cry from  _ none _ and he saw too many of his companions lose hours of sleep in whale bones and rusted iron, carving the same symbol over and over again in every blank space of their life.

  
  


When the song takes over every other sound, when it washes over memories and thougts until there’s only its low hum left. This is Void madness. It is remarkably like a sickness that only infects those who touch the Void and have nothing to protect themselves when it touches them back. Even Marked aren’t immune.

  
  


Or at least Corvo sure as hell isn’t. 

  
  


He knows it could be worse. He has seen the empty rooms of fanatics, the nonsensical words scrawled on every available space like prayers, the shrines that eats away their lives, the runes they worship like the god that owns them. He has seen the feverish looks of Overseers, trying both to admire the heretic objects and forget about them altogether, their shaking hands as they store them out of sight but never out of mind, has heard the strictures being spoken to the familiar tune of whalesong. He’s not that bad.

  
  


But he knows it could be better, too, because Emily has seen the Outsider in her dreams as a child and does not react in any way to his relics. Pietro has seen him, too, but the migraines are almost worse than the madness. As far as he’s aware, Delilah just wants to take over the world, and Daud never seemed to care about runes and bone charms beyond their usefulness, at least the few times he saw him. He’s not sure  _ why _ he’s apparently one of the only Marked who is plagued by this disorder.

  
  


It’s a liability.

  
  


He has had to make more and more reckless moves to get to  _ that one charms, that one runes _ . Each time he comes closer to being seen, escape a room seconds before someone enters it, brushes a guard in still-time and sees him shivering like he’s felt it from barely a foot above. He can’t help it. The hum of the Void is too sweet and he feels almost sick, dizzy and frustrated, when he leaves something behind. 

  
  


That’s what he’s doing here.  _ Here _ being the Abbey’s outpost in the Dust District, a place that gets more and more miserable each second he spends in it. The name couldn’t be more right. Dust gets caught in the folds of his clothes, flies through the holes of his mask, stings his eyes and clogs his throat. He kind of wants to scrubs his skin raw, but he’s not sure it would get all of it off. The storms could have been a positive point, an advantage, but they leave him blind and coughing more than they give him cover from the sight of enemies that are much better suited - or used - to the place.

  
  


He has roamed through the outpost for some time now. His hand hurts in a way that is all too familiar, his reserve of magic dried up by his overuse, and he’s not sure how much is ‘some time’ anymore, not when he’s been stopping the world in its track so many time to search through the building for a key, a note, and the low hum of the Void.

  
  


The later he’s found behind a closed door, which he observed for long minutes, perched a foot above a very busy Overseer. It had been uncomfortable as all hell, but it had taken him more time than he’d care to admit to make his limbs move away from the door. He could destroy it. Could, but won’t: he is too tired, too worn out to blink away fast enough to avoid and the explosion, and the Overseers.

  
  


So he moves slowly, carefully away, to the structures of sun-bleached wood just outside the closed, barred window. His heart is beating just as fast as the clockwork one he’s holding in his hand, and both make him deaf to the whistling of the wind outside. A storm is coming and he  _ cannot reach the rune _ .

  
  


The dust rises and he does not move. He does not make the slightest movement neither to leave nor to find another way - he knows there isn’t one - until the storm picks up and passes around him,  _ through _ him, and the howling of the blinding wind drowns out the singing of the rune. He’s caught unaware and coughs his lungs out, curls up against a wall, his head bent low, until the storm dies out and he’s left covered in dust, his eyes painful and his throat dry as paper. He coughs some more, glances at the window, and thinks,  _ I cannot leave it there _ .

  
  


He does.

  
  
It leaves a bad taste in his mouth, not quite dust but close enough. It feels like heresy, to abandon this rune to the Overseers, and he wonders when he started seeing the Outsider as a god rather than an occult nuisance.


End file.
